Abstract
The church-sect dichotomy provides an effective tool for understanding the relationship between Shi‘i and Sunni ‘ulama’ in Ottoman Iraq in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The term church refers to a dominant religious establishment, which broadly accepts the surrounding sociopolitical system, but occasionally suppresses religious opposition to its authority. The term sect refers to a religious minority, which does not accept the legitimacy of the surrounding dominant sociopolitical environment in which it exists. Moreover, sects often aspire to take over the church, mainly by proselytizing.1 In the Ottoman context, the state-supported Sunni religious establishment played the role of church, while the Shi‘is were viewed as a sect. Within this broader context, the Shi‘i case in Iraq was unique since the Iraqi Shi‘i shrine cities, ‘Atabat-i ‘aliyat (divine thresholds), served as the most important centers of learning and religious leadership in the Shi‘i world, thereby adding to the tension between the two sects. In addition, these Shi‘is were part of the dominant Shi‘i religious establishment in Iran, which in its turn was intolerant toward minorities.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | The Sunna and Shi’a in History |
Subtitle of host publication | Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East |
Editors | Ofra Bengio, Meir Litvak |
Place of Publication | New York, N.Y |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Chapter | 4 |
Pages | 69-86 |
Number of pages | 18 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 023012092X, 023037073X, 1137495065, 1283440296, 9780230370739, 9786613440297, 9781137495068 |
ISBN (Print) | 9780230120921, 9781137485588 |
State | Published - 2011 |
Keywords
- Nineteenth Century
- Religious Establishment
- Death Sentence
- Religious Minority
- Missionary Activity
ULI Keywords
- uli